Princess 26

[Howard]

BTW, many if not all of Graham's plans include a nifty idea on building a scarfing jig for cutting the scarf bevels in your structural wood. The plans are for a table saw, which I don't have. What I do have is a band saw, so I built a scarfing jig for that instead:

 

 

This was a piece of scrap 2 x 6, with a 12:1 bevel ripped down one side. A second piece of hardwood scrap was screwed to the edge to ride in the track molded into the band saw's table. This jig is about 30 inches long, so it is easy to clamp tight, both fore and aft of the cut. I have a great deal of respect for the danger inherent in power tools and particularly saws of all types. This one is no exception. When you realize your fingers are only inches away from being lost, it is best to pay attention to things. Having said that, a band saw seems much safer for this than a table saw. Things happen slower and with more control, and it is all right there in front of you.

 

 

I later modified the jig to 3 inches high as I will be using it to cut 12:1 scarfs on my keep planks, which are full 1" x 5 /2" planks, with the scarf bevel to be cut on the edge. This band saw can rip material as wide as 6 inches, and hopefully as well as it did with these.

 

[Howard]

Yesterday was the day for the "big cut". Cutting out the panel sides. Since these involved 7 sheets of 1/2" plywood, representing a cost of about $90 to $100 each, the pucker factor leading up to this was running high. So it was measure many, many times, then cut wide and plane back to the line.

 

For the straight lines on the stem and transom, I again used my cutting jig, which allows an accurate cut to the line.

 

 

For the curved lines along the chine edge and sheer line, I cut at least 1/8" outside the line, and later used a power plane to bring the edge right to the lines.

 

 

To make these cuts, I use a "side winder" circular saw and a 60 tooth very fine blade, which helps with splintering, which is particularly bad with meranti.  If the cut is straight enough to allow the blade to remain in the cut without binding, I always use a circular saw, vs. a jig saw. I can do a better job of following the line, the cut is faster and will remain square through both layers of panels. If you want to experience frustration, cut these with a jigsaw, only to discover the blade was leaning  or bending and left you with a beveled cut.

 

Most worm drive circular saws have a left hand blade, yet for some reason, most side winders have the blade on the right. I have one of those too and it always seemed awkward to have to bend over the cut to see the line, not to mention the saw rides on the off cut, unless you are able to cut left handed. Since I'm right handed, I special ordered this saw with left sided blade. Works for me.

 

 

Again since I know I'm not good enough to cut to a line with the saw, I cut outside the line, then finished the job with a power planer with 90 degree fence on it. With that, I can shave off as little as 1/64th on each pass. It takes several passes, but less chance of taking off too much.

 

The same small finish nails that I use to establish the station line ends leave a nail hole, which later become tracks to follow. When the nail holes appear, I know I'm close to being done. Note the holes lined up vertically, but not horizontally. More on this later.

 

 

At the end of the day, the panels were either cut exactly to the line or within 1/32nd or so. As good as I'm ever going to get it.

 

Also, first look at the scarfs I made. Those also look pretty good.......or at least good enough.

 

 

Next job will be to start slapping this together.

[LennieG]

Thanks for sharing.....great info. I've read about smaller blade (5 or 6" ) circular saws for curved cuts as well. Ever try those?

[wasserboot]

really nice scarfs you made!!
Well done! Thank you for sharing your progress
 

@ LennieG: Last week i borrowed this saw:
http://www.amazon.de/Mafell-KSP40-Flexistem-Max-Flexisystem/dp/B0013DJE46/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406389485&sr=8-1&keywords=mafell+ksp+40
 

it cuts amazing smooth curves. The blades are 120 mm ø and the motor has power like a bigger saw...

[Howard]

Have begun the process of hanging bulkheads. First discover is that bulkhead #1, not bulkhead #2, is what determines the height you need for your cradle frame. The panel sides have to clear the top of the frame, so to get those high enough to clear and mate with BH #1, BH #2 had to be elevated nearly a foot above where I thought it would be. I initially thought I should lop a foot or so off my frame legs to lower the whole thing, but that might set it so low a person could not climb in under it. Will see what happens when the aft bulkheads are hung. If there is plenty of room back there, this whole thing may get lowered so a person can reach most of the topsides and bottom, without having to place some type of scaffolding on the outside.

 

BTW, plan is to get start with bulkheads aligned to center, plumb and all even to the waterline. Am using a water level, which you can see hanging in the doorway, upper right. I thought 20 feet of hose might be enough, but isn't even close. Probably more like 50 feet or so.

 

Next question is how to attach side panels to the bulkheads. Plans suggest using screws into bulkheads. Since they are mostly 3/8", I'm not good enough to hit that small of a target. Will likely add temp cleats to the bulkhead edges, and screw to those.

[wasserboot]

Howard, It looks good!
I think it is a good idea to screw in temporary cleats.
I am scared about that screws will split the thin bulkheads whilst turning the hull.
Another option might be to tie it together with copper wire (stitch and glue like).
the hull will stay flexible when turning it without the danger of breaking screwholes...
 

[Howard]

Sonke:

 

Wires may be a better option. Those would allow you to tighten, loosen and move things to get them aligned, then gently tighten them to firm things up. With too much tension, a person could pull the wires out, but a small dowel rod under the wires will prevent that.

 

I also plan to use temporary cleats athwartships even at the sheer to have something for the topsides panels to rest on while they are being attached. Each side panel still weighs close to 150 pounds, so they are a lot to wrestle with.

[Brent]

Howard, I strongly suggest running stringers the length of the sheer line. Noodle the bulkheads until the stringers are fair. Temprarily screw the side panels to the stringers. The stringers can be removed after the panels are set if you really want them gone.

[Howard]

Brent:

 

No worries, she definitely gets a set of sheer clamps / inwhales. In fact, I already have them scarfed and ready.

 

What we were fretting over was how to attach the topside panels to the edges of the bulkheads during assembly. Plans suggest to run a drywall screw through the topsides into the edge of the bulkheads, most of which are only 3/8" plywood. I'm not good enough to hit that and wonder if it would hold the weight if I did.

 

Looks to me like the choices are to install a temporary cleat along the edge of the bulkhead and screw into that instead, or as Sonke suggested, treat it as a stitch and glue project and wire the topsides panels to the edges of the bulkheads, tweaking and tightening as it all comes together. A person could then screw in a few temp blocks to survive the first rollover, or as an alternative if it all looks fair, a few epoxy tabs that can later be cut out if more tweaking is needed to get everything fair the first time up.

 

About ready to find out, as the next step is to start on the side panels. Will either have to find a way to hang these on each side so I can continue working alone, or round up some help.

 

I have the bulkheads suspended more or less in their relative positions, aligned plumb to the centerline and each suspended vertically to the lateral water line. These will most likely need to be tweaked to get them aligned right to the corresponding marks on the topsides panels. I suspect none of this was necessary and with a little help a person could probably assemble these on nothing more elaborate than a few saw horses.

 

I did lop off about 10 inches from the cradle legs to get this lowered to a manageable height. For those following, that leaves the top of the cradle about 14 inches off the floor.

[Howard]

This might be a better addition to the "tools and tricks" thread, but as for assembling the bulkheads vertically to the LWL, the tool/trick I used was a water level.

 

These come in two forms, with and without a reservoir. Both methods follow the communicating vessel principle, where water will seek it's own level.

 

Just two loose ends of a hose filled with water are not much help here. It would be a good option to use if I wanted to develop a contour map of the shop floor, which has built in slopes. Fix one end to the wall, over a yardstick, the other end fixed to a staff. Create a grid on the floor and position the staff on the grid points, noting the elevation change on the wall. In short, the water level at both ends floats up and down as you move the hose ends up and down, so if you raise or lower one end, the water level on the other end rises or falls accordingly and you can use that to measure the elevation change.

 

What I wanted was a fixed elevation to measure from. So on one end is a large reservoir of fluid, and the other end is an open ended hose. The water in the reservoir still flows up and down with the change in elevation of the open end, but since we are only talking about a few inches of fluid at most, inside the diameter of the small hose, the amount of volume of fluid moving into the larger reservoir is something less than 1 ml, when spread out over the water surface of the larger vessel will change it so little (microns), that for all practical purposes, it does not move. Less than a fraction of the width of a pencil line. Close enough for this use.

 

So to level these bulkheads to their lateral waterline (LWL), I established an arbitrary baseline, and marked that on the wall near the reservoir. Once my hose lines up to that, it will line up to any point inside the building the hose will reach to, and be accurate to less than the width of a pencil line. If water evaporates over time or I spill some from the hose, all I need to do is go back to the baseline, then raise or lower the jug until I'm back to level. Or, if I want to install something above or below the waterline, I can calibrate that on the wall, change the elevation there to match the difference, then take the hose to where it needs to go and mark the offset for the install. Marking the staff doesn't help, since the floor isn't level. Alternatively, you could mark the LWL at the install, then measure the difference there.

 

This will also be used later on to mark the LWL on the outside of the boat to mark out the line between topsides and bottom for painting. Just go around the boat at one foot intervals, make pencil marks, then connect them with a batten. The modern method would be to use a laser level. I decided to go old school and cheap. The hose is just as effective and cost $9.00. 

[Howard]

Work and family issues knocked me out for a couple weeks, but finally got a chance to hang the topsides and have started on fitting the stem into place.

 

For Scott, Sonke and others following in my wake, a couple thoughts. First, hanging the topsides could probably be done by one person, but I'm not sure how. Lucky for me, a group of bystanders showed up one day and I put them to work. Initially, I hung the topsides in place with wires, but those proved to not be strong enough to hold the panels in place either vertically, or horizontally. So I later went back and also installed vertical cleats on the bulkhead marks to align them fore and aft, and braces below each bulkhead to align them to the shear line, and to help support their weight. I might be tempted to go ahead and install temporary vertical cleats to help with the alignment of the bulkheads to their marks, before I hung the topsides. My guess as to where place the bulkheads was close, but not close enough. They all had to be moved a bit. Having the cleats already installed would speed that up a lot.  The transom and stem, being on the ends, pretty much came into perfect alignment on their own.

 

I think this part of the assembly could be done on a set of sawhorses (even with help, that is what we used), but eventually, something more sturdy will be required. Photos only show one of the inwhales in place of where the keel planks will be, put there to test alignment. For the bottom install, the whole assembly will need to support not only it's own weight (in reasonably true alignment) but will also have to support the bottom panels (about 200 pounds by themselves), plus 200 pounds of me crawling around on top of them to get them aligned and glued into place. The keel planks will take the weight, but again, in order for the whole assembly to remain reasonably true, it can't be too rickety.

[wasserboot]

Howard that looks good!!
did you "spot weld" the topsides to the bulkheads? Or are they fixed only with the few screws that are shown in the photographs?
thank you for keeping us informed about your progress.

[Howard]

For now, just screws and wires. Once she is trued up enough to install the bottom panels, I likely will put in a few "spot welds", if nothing else, to maintain the fore and aft alignment of the bulkheads. Enough to hold her firmly in place, but not so much they could not be cut out if a better alignment dictates it once she is rolled upright the first time.

[Howard]

A rather small update. Actually, despite several days working on this, there isn't much apparent progress. After about the 4th of 5th time of adjusting and tweaking bulkheads, transom and stem, it finally dawned on my that each time I nudged something to bring it into alignment, I also nudged something out of alignment. I was certain that I could eventually get it all nailed down, but to no joy. Eventually, you have to find a way to move on, so I am now in the process truing things, up, then pinning with epoxy tabs to lock it down. Those won't move......I hope.

 

Anyway, as of today, stem is glued in. Stem knee is screwed in place and ready to glue to the stem and first keel batten, once the keel batten is trued up. Transom and topside panels looked good, so those were spot welded into place with epoxy tabs.

 

 

[Howard]

On the stem knee, not sure if Wayne and Brent encountered this problem or if it's something I caused, but when I dry fitted the stem and stem knee, I found the angle generated by mounting flush to the forward edge of the topside panels was off a bit, and the stem was mounted too low. I wound up raising the stem almost exactly an inch to bring the LWL marked on the stem up to the same level as the LWL on the bulkheads and transom. To true up the angle, I simply scribed it, taking off about half an inch on the forward bottom edge. When raised to the LWL, it now takes the keel batten off the other bulkheads almost exactly. What initially looked like a disaster proved to be not much problem at all (or so I think at the moment).

 

 Was a little concerned about what the consequences of this would be, but once in place the entire keel plank has a nearly consistent camber from stem to stern. In other words, it looks like the keel has a fair curve to it. Hopefully, we will be OK with this.

[Howard]

Modern era meets old school.

 

While my roughed out attempt at planing the stem was close, it clearly needed some fine tuning. Not having a workbench and vice in the boat barn (yet), I was looking around for something sturdy to clamp to. Best option came in the form of the jointer fence.

 

The actual jointer could not be used for this as this is more of what I would call a "rolling bevel", not entirely unlike a propeller.

 

Power tools are handy, but can't do it all.

[Howard]

Keel is to be formed by two 5/4 x 5 1/2 planks, laminated together into a curved shape. Bottom plank (the one on top for now) has to be shaped into a shallow V to accept the bottom panels. Plans suggest running this plank through a table saw set at about a 7 degree angle. Problem is I don't have a table saw around here and wouldn't know how to run a 30' keel plank through it on edge if I did. You could run the two shorter planks through individually, but would then have to scarf them together in the V shape.

 

In the end, I wound up laying this top plank out on sawhorses and went down each side with a power plane, set to lop off a whopping 1/16th" per pass, so took about 4 passes per side and a massive amount of shavings on the ground.. The plane has a fence on it that can be set to a bevel. In the end, it took all of about 20 minutes to do both sides. Not nearly as big a deal as I had anticipated it would be.

 

Once the first plank is in place, this will now be ready to laminate on, getting ready to trim the final bevels for the bottom panels.

[Howard]

Keel is to be formed by two 5/4 x 5 1/2 planks, laminated together into a curved shape. Bottom plank (the one on top for now) has to be shaped into a shallow V to accept the bottom panels. Plans suggest running this plank through a table saw set at about a 7 degree angle. Problem is I don't have a table saw around here and wouldn't know how to run a 30' keel plank through it on edge if I did. You could run the two shorter planks through individually, but would then have to scarf them together in the V shape.

 

In the end, I wound up laying this top plank out on sawhorses and after marking the CL with a jig, went down each side with a power plane, set to lop off a whopping 1/16th" per pass, so took about 4 passes per side and a massive amount of shavings on the ground.. The plane has a fence on it that can be set to a bevel. In the end, it took all of about 20 minutes to do both sides. Not nearly as big a deal as I had anticipated it would be.

 

Once the first plank is in place, this beveled plank will now be ready to laminate on, getting ready to trim the final bevels for the bottom panels.

[Howard]

Despite working on this often, have not made a lot of visible progress, having encountered what for me were a couple of snags.

 

Back when I began fitting the topside panels to the edges of the bulkheads, it quickly became apparent something was off. The edges of the bulkheads needed to mate up to the topside panels at their line and they didn't. The transom was spot on, as was the measurement at the stem, but all the other bulkheads, for some reason, came up a bit short and needed to be shimmed to fit. In most cases, it was about 1/4", which I added back to the bottom side of most of the bulkhead panels to bring them flush to the INSIDE of the panels at the chine.

 

However, once the bottom panels were ready to be laid on, they were resting on the OUTSIDE edge of the topside panel. Since the topsides and bottom panels join at an obtuse angle, this has to either be corrected by shimming, or planing a bevel on the outside edge of the topsides chine to match the of the keel planks. After considerable debate, I decided to shim so the panels would lie on the outside edge, leaving a nice inside gap for the epoxy to fill along the chine. The bottom panels sit at the same angle, only slightly deeper. This will make for an easy install (no need to plane a rolling bevel down the entire length of the boat, and be consistent with it side to side) and clean topside lines as laid out and as I cut them out. That seemed to work as once the keel planks were in and beveled, it leaves a nice fair curve and tight outside edge.

 

For those following along, since I'm not sure what the source of the offset was (either the plans or something I screwed up), to be on the safe side, I suggest that when you cut out your bulkheads, mark them out as on the plans, but leave at least an inch extra on the bottom part that will mate to the bottom panels. That way, if your bulkheads mate to the side panels perfectly, you will only need to cut them in place as per plans. If not, you can then add as much as you need to bring them out to where they need to be simply by marking off an even offset parallel line. If you want to do as I am doing and let the bottom panels rest on the outside edge of the topside panels, you will have enough extra material on the bulkhead that you won't have to shim anything.

 

Also, I would avoid notching the bulkheads for the inwhales until you are ready to install them. Not having the bulkheads and the topsides meeting fully at the edge makes alignment more difficult than it needs to be.

 

Also, for some reason, the LWL on BH#5 was off. With the boat set level and all other LWL's set spot on and edges mated to the topsides panels, the LWL on BH 5 moved UP about an inch or so. Nothing about the dimensions changed, only the vertical position of the LWL. When completed, the bulkhead will be sitting about an inch deeper in the water than what the LWL on the plans would suggest.

 

After making a few tweaks and adjustments and fiddling with it a while, I think I have it looking as it was intended to be. The issues I encountered were unexpected, but in the big picture, not a big deal, just something to be aware of if you starting to build this boat.

[Howard]

Once fitted and ready, installing the keel planks was a straightforward process. Knowing I"d be working alone, I used a slow cure hardener as I didn't want it going off before I was ready. This took spreading unthickened epoxy down 54 feet (27' x 2) of keel planks, then going back to mix and spread thickened epoxy down one plank. That easily took over an hour before the clamps went on.

 

I may have overdone the amount of epoxy I used, but didn't want a starved joint. What I got instead was a joint that was still oozing squeeze out two hours later and even into the night after I left. Had a lot of unwanted cleanup to do the next day.

 

In retrospect, If possible, I would suggest you find a way to accurately cut the 7 degree bevel in before you install last keel plank.  From the plank centerline to outside edge, that means you will be taking off somewhere between 1/4"  and 3/8". Lacking a table saw for this, I might try running it through a thickness planer with a 1/4" or 3/8" shim tacked to the outside edges. What I managed to do with the power planer was not uniform enough.  I had a lot of pruning to do after the keel planks were in  place and that is not a good place to be doing it.

 

The actual process of wetting out two planks of this length were easier than I thought. I found a way to put them side to side and once ready to drop the top piece into place, all I had to do was roll it over. If flopped right into place.